I personally work with music copyright claims for an internet company and as i see a lot of folks here (including the author) are missing the copyright thing. They are not claiming for the fingerprinted music, they are claiming for what the big publishing companies are saying, and they are the ones making the rules. This is how it works more or less, YT fingerprints a piece, they run their algorithms on new content and if they match the fingerprint, also using metadata, if its right and guess what, most of the time its not, they look at what the MULTIPLE publishers claims on the same stuff. Publishers can claim whatever they want, they need just to face other publishers if they abuse their power (and bare with me, this is mad because there is no central authority!), there is no such way as YouTube able to rule on copyrighted content. So as an example, if i upload a video with the 5th of Beethoven, the algorithm can fingerprint it correctly, next YT looks at what publishers are claiming and if there is someone with a valid recording of that piece at a "performance" level, they need to pay for the content otherwise stated. And just to add something more, there are three different type of "claims" in the music industry, mechanical, synchronization and performance share, more about the aforementioned here http://www.copyright.com/blog/music-licensing-public-perform...